Japan is the largest medical device market in Asia. The country already has sophisticated and complete regulations for medical device management and a large number of highly educated professional and technical personnel. Therefore, Japan’s medical device products enjoy a good reputation in the international market. For European and American medical device exporters, it is not an easy task to enter their products into the Japanese market because Japan has extremely strict approval and testing procedures for imported medical device products, and more importantly, Japan itself is also the world. The major medical device manufacturers are big countries and big exporters.

China: Full of Business Opportunities

For medical device manufacturers in Europe and the United States, China is not only a major export market but also a major import market. On the one hand, unlike Japan, until the early 1990s, China still lacked a perfect system of laws and regulations concerning imported medical device products. In addition, China lacked the ability to independently develop and produce high-end medical device products (such as CT, MRI, and PET). Capacity, and domestic urgent need for such diagnostic equipment, so in the 1990s, with the rapid development of China's economy, it quickly became a large market for European and American manufacturers to sell high-end medical device products. According to statistics from the Pacific Bridge Consulting Corporation, in the 1990s, the number of CT machines imported by China has far exceeded that of most Asian countries except Japan.

At present, European and American medical device manufacturers generally believe that China is the most commercial market in Asia. China not only has a population of 1.3 billion, but also has huge stocks of foreign exchange reserves (this is better than other Asian countries). Therefore, the ability to pay is not a problem. Another factor that should not be overlooked is that China, like Japan, is experiencing an aging population. In many large cities in China, elderly people over the age of 60 already account for 16% of the urban population. The proportion of elderly people in Japan is higher than in China. The elderly need medical device products more than other people, especially small electronic medical devices such as home electronic diagnostic and therapeutic instruments. Western economists believe that in the future, China, like Japan, will need to import more implantable stents, orthopedic instruments, home electronic diagnostic instruments, atrial defibrillators, cardiac pacemakers, and various large electronic diagnostic devices. . This will create more export opportunities for European and American medical device manufacturers.

On the other hand, unlike India, China can produce most of the commonly used medical device products, especially China has the world's strongest disposable medical device products, such as disposable syringes, infusion sets, blood transfusion bags, and general surgical instruments. The production capacity of various medical textiles (including sanitary napkins, sterile gauze, surgical napkins, and medical garments). At present, the number of medical device manufacturers with a certain scale of production in China exceeds the sum of European and U.S. medical device manufacturers, of which 200 medical device manufacturers specialize in the production of disposable medical device products. Through the development in recent years, China has become a rapidly emerging exporter of medical device products. Many low-value-added labor-intensive medical device products have export markets. For example, disposable syringes for clinical use in the United States are mostly from China.

India: Tourism economy stimulates imports

Although India is the world’s most populous country after China, its total economic output is less than a quarter of that of China. In recent years, the export of APIs in India has developed rapidly. However, India has not yet established a basic medical device industry. Medical device production is a “short leg” in the country. Most of its domestic medical device products are imported from overseas. Over the past decade, India has been developing the “tourism medical” industry. Every year, more than 100,000 patients in Europe and America travel to Indian hospitals as tourists. It is thus possible to create an annual import value of US$150 million in medical device products.

Southeast Asia and West Asia: Expecting to Become a New Hot Spot

Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia are expected to become the new hot countries in the Asian medical device market. Economic experts predict that the total annual import and export volume of medical devices in Southeast Asia will reach more than US$1.5 billion.

Due to the abundant reserves of oil and natural gas in the West Asia region and the soaring oil prices in the international market in recent years, the West Asian countries have benefited greatly. In the future, West Asia will become an important market for medical devices. It is expected that the number of imported medical devices in West Asia is expected to exceed US$1 billion.